Timid
by 1Past and Present1
Summary: "Do you still feel safe with me?"
1. Chapter 1

"Shadow?" Boots on the stairs, ascending. "My love, are you decent?" An unnecessary knock on his door, indicating that Rouge is nervous, because she rarely knocks. She's rarely nervous. Strangely, she's been nervously knocking these past few months. She says it's because she's getting old and uncertain of herself, but she's not yet old. She is getting uncertain, though. And increasingly nervous.

"I suppose."

"_Shadow_," the bat reiterates breathily, tossing open the door and entering his bedroom with a melodramatic flourish, advancing on him. "How do I look?"

"You're beautiful." He means it, because as far as mortal women go, she is spectacular.

She turns about. "Not too beautiful?"

He smirks fondly at that. "Not quite, though do be careful."

"Good, good."

"You're a treasure hunter. This is just another hunt."

"What charmingly sappy bullshit!"

A glance at the digital clock. "You're going to be late."

"Right! One more thing. Babe, listen, I've misplaced my glasses, again, and if I can't read the damn menu, _again_..."

"They're on the coffee table."

"See? This is why I need you."

"Quite." The hedgehog quietly sighs, but the sound is stifled once his jaw is expertly cradled in her capable hand, a gentle tilt upward drawing his eyes from the comforting normalcy of his book, as he had tried to lose himself in the words. "_Rouge_," he murmurs, ever astounded by his patient domesticity, "you'll be fine."

She nods silently, eventually letting him go. She isn't used to feeling this way. This out of control of a social occasion. This dreadful.

He demurely returns to his book, enjoying the sunlight that filters in from his bedside window.

"I'll get dinner on my way back, okay?"

"Thank you. Have fun."

"Hopefully!" She marches for the door, pulling it shut in her wake, heels clicking expensively, somehow, as she proceeds down the passageway. "See you in a bit, honey!" she shouts once downstairs.

"See you," he calls back.

She lets herself out, partaking in a bigger world, leaving him to the peace of poetry and a house that feels submerged.

And he is so tired.

* * *

Roused from an obscure dream, Shadow mewls in a way he would find normally find mortifying. There is the weight of his book spread over his chest. His arms are stiff, having been flung about his bent quills. He opens his eyes to behold Rouge's loving amusement, his head filled with her comfortingly familiar perfume.

"Sorry," she murmurs, leaning against the wall, hands in the pockets of her jeans. "Didn't mean to disturb you, hon." She didn't bother to knock. Simply opened the door, found him, and settled, staring.

"When'd you get home?"

"Just now. Go back to sleep. We'll chat later."

"It's fine." He slowly eases himself upright, burying his yawn behind a fist. "Tell me." He recovers quickly. "How'd it go?"

"It was passable."

"Passable?"

"Nice enough girl, but I won't be seeing her again."

"You say that every time."

"That's 'cause I mean it whenever I say it."

"What did she do wrong?"

"How do you know it was her? Could've been me."

"I know you. I don't know her."

"Ah."

"Well?"

"Well. She was intimidated by me."

"I see."

"Women usually are, though. I find it hard to make female friends, let alone girlfriends. Anything more than a casual romp and I end up rubbing them the wrong way. Heh."

"Perhaps she wasn't sure how to handle someone like you."

"Too beautiful?"

"Maybe. "

Fleeting aquamarine delves into crimson eternity. "Sex is so simple, honey."

"I wouldn't know."

"I do. I'm a simple creature. You aren't. Seduction's a breeze. Romance, though? Courtship? I think, if you gave it a chance, you'd be a wonderful companion."

"Aren't I, already?"

"You know what I mean, handsome."

Shadow shuffles over, making room for Rouge to join him on his bed.

"Come, now. I'm being serious."

"As am I."

Smirking, she pushes off of the wall, barefoot and without her fashionable jacket or handbag, having stripped herself of accessories on her way to his room. She's carelessly left belongings scattered about the house, again. She'll find them, eventually, or he'll find them for her.

He feels the mattress shift under her weight as she joins him on his bed. He grunts beneath the peck of gratitude deposited a little sloppily over his cheek.

"Hey, at least I've got you, eh?" She says this so often, nowadays, it's a joke that's starting to sound prophetic.

"At least, yes."

She sprawls on her back alongside him, one ankle crossing over the other, folding her arms beneath her head.

After setting his book aside, he reclines again, rolling over to face her, draping an arm across her middle.

"Dinner's downstairs."

He studies her profile. Up close, he can see how there are silver hairs emerging amidst the white, particularly about her ear. "Thank you." Perhaps he's wrong. Maybe she's older than he thought.

"You're welcome, hon. What's a few inches more to my waistline? Not like anybody else appreciates it. That's a lie."

"You look tired."

"Yeah. I think you had the right idea, before. I could go for a nap, too." She turns her head to rest against his, nuzzling him briefly. "Rejection sure is exhausting."

He closes his eyes. Lapses. A wave on a shore. Unearthing seashells and stirring bleached bones.

She says something, illegible, then she is silent, submerged.

Without provocation, he kisses her, thoughtlessly. She seems suddenly unknown. Different. But she shouldn't have changed.

She takes several moments to respond, as if tentatively returning the gesture. A caress of her fuller lips that should feel gentle, but there's nothing. All he feels are her breaths, hot and calm, passing from her nostrils as he observes their engagement.

He whines, growing tense, as if afraid, but there's no reasonable monster.

"Honey?"

He is shaken. His eyes flutter open, finding hers, staring, her hand on his arm.

"You drifted off, again," she says, when she feels she needs to explain.

His lips are a little dry. "Why'd you wake me?" he asks, as if he needs to know.

"Oh, uh." She frowns. This question is strange. Suddenly, this whole situation, which had been so akin to normal, is strange. "I thought you were having a bad dream."

He can't remember.


	2. Chapter 2

"I'm not built for it," Rouge decides aloud, a final declaration of her gradual, reluctant defeat, muttered over buttered toast generously smothered with strawberry jam. "Romance just isn't for this old bat. It'll be one-night stands and backseat bucking for me 'til the day I'm dry."

Returning from the chrome kettle and the marble countertop, Shadow apologetically sets a cup of coffee beside her, accepting in turn a sloppy peck on the cheek.

"Thanks, hon."

He wants to speak, to say anything even remotely comforting or useful to her, but finds himself standing over her chair and passively watching as she takes a bite of her breakfast.

She chews methodically, cool eyes contemplating the window. Like there may be whatever she's been looking for, but she's disappointed in the world beyond their submerged home, a snow globe surrounded by the echoing flurry of social desolation and empty hopes.

He feels his hand suddenly on her shoulder, but there's a strange undercurrent to the otherwise familiar touch, some sort of inarticulate tension humming within her flesh or his, or perhaps it's buzzing within the both of them.

She blinks, heavy lashes obscuring the dart of her eyes as she turns to gaze coolly up at him.

Maybe she's feeling it too, he thinks, opening and closing his mouth on mute words.

She smiles softly from behind the jagged wound of her buttered toast, laden so heavily with strawberry jam. She's a handsome woman who never did live out that stereotypical happy ending. She couldn't, even if she wanted to, because she chose to live with him, instead.

Guilt weighs heavily, again. He bows his head and wonders if the ending he has given her can be good enough an exchange.

"Hey."

He feels her hand slide over his, still braced over her shoulder, and the fit is perfect.

"What's the matter?"

"I'm sorry," he says, finally finding his voice.

"What for?"

"You. Me."

"What do you mean, love?"

"I'm sorry for you." He scoffs, but it comes out more akin to a sigh. "For having me."

"I'm not. I'm a very lucky lady, actually."

"I doubt that."

"Then you're just being stupid."

"You've surrendered mortal conventions to be with me."

"Are you calling me conventional, beautiful?"

"No." His eyes are like rubies as he gazes deep within her, finding a cool wall beyond her aquamarine gemstones. He caresses it, presses himself against it, hot and alluring, a sore temptation he doesn't understand. "But I know that you crave something else, something more."

"I… I suppose I am a little lonely."

"Even though you have me. Even though I'm here."

"It's different."

"Exactly."

"Stop this, hon. You know I don't blame you."

He watches the way her lips move, admitting a flash of fangs as she takes another bite. The strong churning of her jaw as she masticates.

She's not the type to talk with her mouth full. Even her eyes are quiet, observing, rendering her strangely self-conscious to his study.

"I've been thinking." He slowly descends, bowing further, until his breaths linger with hers. "But it's not a conscious sort of thought. It's… like a dream, sometimes. I can't always tell the difference."

She abruptly stops chewing.

"Rouge, you're my best friend."

She suddenly ceases to breathe. Her muscles impulsively flex, body readying itself, as he once more loses his words with the timid emergence of his tongue, extending to take a crumb from the upturned corner of her mouth.

It's an erotic thing that he has just done, but he cannot undo it, now. He asks himself as he tastes her, tastes the strawberry jam, tastes the buttered bread, why is she still smiling? But he doesn't ask himself why he did this to her. What he hoped to achieve.

She swallows as the slice of toast slips from her lax fingertips, failing to notice that the side with the jam is the side that bears the brunt of the fall.

With a tilted head he nuzzles her cheek, tongue delving deeper into her smile.

Her breaths return with a sharp inhale, then a stuttering exhale. Perhaps it hurts a little, because their fingers have interweaved to the point of knotting together, clenching over her shoulder.

He tries half-heartedly to supply reasons for this absurdity. But he's mostly afraid and he isn't used to being afraid. He reaches out to her for something he can recognise, something he can remember.

She moans, leaning into him in kind, as if she's found it, or something else, something she's trying hold, then eventually ingest.

He has seen the way adults kiss each other in the movies and in reality. He knows the eternity of Maria's delicate lips etched on his forehead, the playful instant of Rouge's peck on his cheek. But Shadow has never been the deliberate instigator of passion, simply the passive recipient of a woman's affections.

The bat pushes her chair back and snakes her free arm about the hedgehog's hips, pulling him closer.

Shadow is doll-like, occupying her lap in a sea of confusion, his free fist driving itself in her shirt, seizing the collar as an anchor. There is a disjoint between his body and his mind.

Experienced, Rouge now draws sensual shapes over his lower stomach, her womanly hand spread with spidery wisdom. She has thoughts of melding bodies, of the passionate culmination of their shared decades, her honourable faculties being swallowed by a bellowing animal she keeps loosely leashed inside.

He has read about lovemaking in novels and poems. As her glassy fingernails illustrate her intentions, he urges himself to wake up. But he can't recall falling asleep and he's not sure if the urge is something he chooses, because he wants to, or if it's the fearful last resort of a man who has never been touched this way, before.

When he whimpers, she realises who they are and hurriedly pries their twisted mouths apart, panting her arousal and horror into his gaping astonishment.

His gaze is wide, almost accusing, as he waits for her to speak.

Suddenly passive, too, she realises that he has never looked at her like this, before.


	3. Alternative Ending

"You're immortal."

Shadow watches the strip of cloth wind its way further along his arm.

"Not indestructible, dumbass."

His smirk is faint.

"Sorry for the lecture," Rouge mutters sourly whilst tenderly bandaging his wound, having taken a prolonged moment for huffy rumination over the day's events. "You're tough as hell, but sometimes, I forget it, too. And I remember whenever I see you bleed."

He is seated amidst the rubble, breathing smoke, patiently unmoving beneath her ministrations.

"And it freaks me the fuck out, man."

He chuckles quietly at that.

"My heart can't take it," she says with a reluctant upturn of the corner of her mouth, almost as if a reflexive twitch has set in. "I'm getting too old."

"Too fond, you mean."

"God. It's terrible!"

"Quite."

She finishes up with a bitterly amused sigh before tipping her weight on her haunches, stretching her back with a loud click of cartilage. Her wings flutter momentarily, then neatly fold once more.

"You are actually getting old, however."

"Uh-huh."

He grunts when she harmlessly shoves his shoulder, mindful of his injury.

"And you're still that same lovable asshole."

"Some things never change, mm?"

She grins, now.

* * *

"Hormones," Rouge surmises, like it's the answer to every question ever asked by the sobbing and the alone.

"Hormones," Shadow assents, weakly.

She scoffs at this exchange, unsure of whether or not she can ever scrub away this feeling of shame and repulsion she directs toward herself.

"It's not your fault."

Because she doesn't answer, she feels his hand suddenly set upon her wrist, stalling her movements.

"Don't blame yourself."

She had been busy folding laundry, but now she's gazing at his fingers, delicately clasping her flesh and bones. He means to comfort and control and she isn't sure what to think, anymore.

"I seduced you. This is as much my responsibility as it is yours."

"You're not like me."

"I'm not innocent."

"You're different. You didn't mean it. But I…" She winces and shrinks into herself. "Honey, I acted deliberately."

"You're a woman," he says carefully, after a moment of awkward thought. "I'm a man. Some people have differing tastes, but for us…"

"I had no right."

He drags his thumb softly, slowly, over her pulse.

"I'm supposed to take care of you. Protect you."

"You have," is his murmured reply. "You do."

"I took advantage."

"I tempted you."

"That doesn't make what I did any less wrong. I can't… Fuck it, you don't understand it all."

"I understand enough."

"You're so damn innocent. Your crime was curiosity, and I don't know how to stomach myself."

"I'm fine. Unhurt. We'll persevere. We'll be fine."

"When? We're trapped in this, together, in this fucking bubble or–"

"Reverse snow globe."

"Being hurt and being the cause. Hurting, but two sides in one." She allows him to rest his head close to hers, like there's a heaviness to thinking. "Hurt comes across differently, honey. And my intentions aren't blameless."

"Rouge…"

"Shadow. I wanted you."

He breathes against her cheek. "I don't see you as a villain."

"I'm sorry I touched you like that." Her shudder reverberates within the pit of his stomach. "I'm so sorry I let myself."

"I'm sorry, too. For putting you in that position."

She grazes her silky head against his. An instinctive, barely sentient gesture.

* * *

"I like this one."

"It's a good one."

Shadow doesn't know much about wine, but he entrusts Rouge to choose well enough for the both of them and he is pleased with her tastes. He sits on the chair on the earthy pavestones outside, seated at the little table opposite her.

Music emanates from the softly lit bowels of their home.

He is sipping wine with his eyes searching for stars amidst the leafy canopy of their garden. When they purchased the place, it was partially based on his fondness for a nice garden. When he thinks on how often she has acted based on his desires, sometimes at the cost of her own, he is astonished by how such a strong and sometimes selfish woman can so willingly bend to please the man she loves. He's not sure if he has obliged her equally, or closely enough to be fair. He'd like to be better.

"It's so humid."

"Unfortunately."

She holds a paper fan in her hand, waving it at her flushed muzzle and partially unbuttoned breasts, thanking the dark for hiding her typical immodesty which feels odd, now. But she knows he sees her fine. She wonders if despite everything, she wants to be seen. She hates pondering the conflicting interests, usually so certain, but now so confused.

"We must make use of this weekend."

"Oh, yeah?"

"Yes. An outing."

"Try to escape the fever of this place, huh?"

"Something like that."

"Sure, hon." She briefly giggles in a way that sounds defeated and relieved at the same time. "Let's go out this weekend."

"And we must invite Omega."

"He's a blast. Literally!"

"Indeed."

"Ah. I can't wait."

After a while, in which nothing is said, the hedgehog turns slowly to gaze at the bat, discovering that she's been gazing at him.

"I'm really very thankful for you."

"Me, too."

"I mean, I'm difficult to love. But I've got you and you love me."

"I do."

"And I love you, too."

He feels a familiar lance go through him. Invisible and unbreakable and pleasantly painful.

Rouge bites her lip, as if a schoolgirl faced with an infatuation in flesh, unused to being so disarmed so openly.

Red eyes wait for this woman to speak again, the man stagnant alongside her in their sinking space, knowing that she will die and he will go on without her, until something or someone takes his bastard life.

"Thank you."

Another sip of wine, finding it tastes the same as before.

"Thank you for being my best friend, Shadow."

He sets his glass gently down, taking a deep breath in, then breathing out.

Her eyes are burning.

"You're welcome."


End file.
